Need Help lga 775 mobo?

My son's dell 8400 has a socket 775 mobo. The case is shot and the connectors to the mobo are dell only. What are my options? New mobo and case means can't use hard drive with all his info on it? How do I build this and keep his hard drive? Any suggestions I'm starting the rebuild right away? Thank You Kesler

You should be able to salvage the hard drive, but you will probably need a new case, power supply, and mobo. Is the hard drive SATA or IDE? (Does it use a ~2.5" wide ribbon cable or a ~0.5-0.75" 7-conductor SATA cable?
--kitty

first I will agree, u should have never bought the Dell to start with. Build the new computer, install the new OS, and then put the old hdd in it as a second and take the stuff he wants to save off. Once everything has been backedup you can format the old drive and use it as a second hdd which if he will put everything on the second hdd in the first place when saving it he will not have a loss of anything unless the hdd goes bellyup.

Kitty I am going to appoligise as u must have been typing when I started reading but I am going to disagree. If he replaces the MB the hdd will not work with that OS on it.

It is sata. I've got a case and psu. I guess I'll have to get a new mobo. I bought the dell before I started building myself. No more dell. You can't even reuse the mobo and they make it that way on purpose.